Monthly Archives: November 2009

Seems like I’ve been blogging for a very long time. Though my archives won’t reveal it, (moving to WordPress was a monster task that my friend The Lynnster did for me because she is a sweetheart, but the process caused some older posts to stay behind) I’ve been at this since I moved to Nashville. So, I had to laugh a little when I realized that I had not logged in for close to a month! At first, I just thought I was taking a mental break…too much to absorb, categorize, and comment upon. Finding something to write about is easy enough, or at least it was. In the past, much of my writing was at least in part motivated by politics. I don’t know if I had a mild form of Bush Derangement Syndrome or if the idea of sending kids off to war lit a fire under me, but it seems I had much to say these last 8 years or so…

I hope I still do. I toyed with the idea of “going dark”, shutting down The Chronicles and calling it a good run. That idea didn’t sit well with me. For better or worse, I’ve carved out this tiny piece of the internet and claimed it as my own, and it feels wrong to just abandon it just because its become difficult to do on a daily basis. I thought about becoming a “niche blogger”, and perhaps even turn a buck with this hobby. Nah. I know me, and I know that the time will come when I will resent being forced to write for a specific audience, or, worse, forced to remove language so I do not offend those paying me. Been there, done that. Then, there is also the realization that if writing were scored like golf, I’d be something like a 18 handicap. You know the feeling if you’ve ever played a sport because you love it, even though you have reached The Peter Principle with respect to your mastery…yet, you continue to play. Like that beautiful shot that leaves your hand perfectly, and travels a great distance, ultimately landing where you intended, writing is like that for me. During a typical 18 hole round, a duffer like me might hit The One Shot that brings him back to play another day. So it is with that one well -constructed thoughtful sentence. Some people are naturals…I am not. I have to work at it just to keep from embarrassing myself.

Anyway, I ain’t shutting this thing down.

But there will be changes. If I don’t get here every day, I am not offering up reasons for it. I’m not going to feel like I “should write” today. It has to be ok, in my head, to just observe the events of the day without experiencing a need to comment about them. People who know me will tell you I am not well suited for it. I have lived my life believing those that sit and say nothing deserve their fate…it has taken decades for me to understand that not everyone passes judgment on what fate brings them…its always just what it is. Until it isn’t.

So much of what passes for blogging these days isn’t working for me. I don’t want to surf around the web and then spend a couple of hours telling another person why they are full of shit, waiting for them to respond, and then telling them why their response is full of shit. Not that sometimes it isn’t fun to do so, its just that all too often the ferocity of the attack is tempered by some perceived status that person has…so it feels fake, or at least contrived. I feel no need to have my every utterance echoed by a bevy of regular readers, each, possibly, with their own agenda that they will in time expect me to support. On the flip side, I can’t just post cute pics of animals or music videos and call it a blog. I want this to be fun, but I want to do this even when it is not fun.

I aim to find balance. I’ve been trying to explain the importance of that to my daughter, (to the extent that you can explain something you don’t fully understand) and its been a running joke throughout our Holiday together.

Rock Solid, Travis Damn Quillen, Chad420, and myself headed off yesterday to Crocket Park to pay homage to both the weather gods and the disc golf gods. At 10 in the morning, we hit the first tee. What a gorgeous day it was. Two different things happened that literally had me falling to the ground. The first thing happened on the third tee, as we were discussing why one of our group was absent. Travis Damn Quillen summed it up this way:

“Vamos a la iglesia hoy”. I spit out my drink and fell to the ground laughing, though, I realize that if you don’t know the circumstances, that may not strike you as very funny. C’est la vie.

Ok, well, as i said the weather was perfect. Around 10:15, I was down to my Popeye t-shirt and still felt overdressed. There was a bit of a breeze, but really not enough to alter your throwing style. I had some monster drives. Rock Solid, as is his way, quietly made enough pars to stay in the race. Chad420 was in better form than I have ever seen. But, Travis Damn Quillen owned the day. Here is a picture that shows his disc actually stuck between two of the wires that make up the basket. Seriously, if you do not think this is difficult, try it standing right next to the basket. It is nearly impossible to fold your disc so that it will fit in that much space. Well, the second thing that brought me to my knees was how this disc came to be there. It was launched from a different zip code. I watched the damn thing leave Travis Damn Quillen’s hand in a blur, then sail off, first gently banking right, then changing direction like a F14 and slamming itself into the basket at 200 mph. It was a once-in-a-lifetime shot.

Well, we returned safely from our trip to Maryland. It was a drive, to say the least. The way out was through Knoxville, up along 81, then over to 70 east. Finally got to see where the big race is held here in Tn. Beautiful area. Once there, we were treated like visiting royalty…we each had our own bedroom, the Primary Wife and I had the entire bottom floor of this immense house overlooking the Maryland hillsides, really quite breathtaking. Our princess, Supermousey, had a big beautiful four poster bed in her room, and she spent her time there holding a wine glass filled with water or tea and walking around like she was born to it. We drove into Baltimore and visited the National Aquarium, then walked around around the harbor and got to climb up on a couple of ships that were survivors of Pearl harbor, a Coast Guard light ship and a submarine that actually sank the last enemy ship during World War Two.

Then our hosts treated us to dinner at a modest steakhouse called, um, Ruth Chris’s. There was food everywhere. I accidentally wandered into the bar while looking for a restroom, and felt compelled to order a single malt scotch to cover up my mistake. Then, I felt compelled to repeat the whole process. The kids were quite taken by this place, so much so, that Supermousey took pictures of her dessert, (a raspberry sorbet) and The Nog kept running into the restroom to use the free mouthwash and hand lotion they provide. Later, a handful of Ravens came in to celebrate their victory over the previously undefeated Broncos. As is my habit, I got nose to nose with a drunk patron that bumped into me and gave me a “go to hell” look to boot. As I was explaining to him that I welcomed a little post dinner exercise if he desired, his driver separated us diplomatically, and that was the end of it. (turns out, the valet guys saw what was happening, and went and got the driver. The drunk in question turned out to be a good friend of the owner and has a reputation for being obnoxious, unlike myself. I guess my time chatting up the valet guys earlier in the evening was well spent.)

The next day, off to D.C. We drove to Brunswick, caught the Marc-Train (I kid you not) which dropped us at Union Station. From there, we bought tickets on a double decker tour bus and visited every single historical landmark you can name. Washington D.C. is a gorgeous city in the Fall. I could spend a week there just visiting the museums and sitting in the many parks surrounding the Capitol. This picture sums up Nog’s mood that day:

The weather, btw, was perfect. Cool, sunny, just a little windy crossing the Potomac.

As fate would have it, we happened to be in the right place at the right time, and we got to meet POTUS:

I think Mr. Obama has intimacy issues, since, even with a warm, caring, in fact, adoring supporter like me, he remained quite rigid and dare I say a tad distant. Actually, I found him rather one dimensional.

Finally, we got to visit what I consider the crown jewel of the D.C. tourist attractions, the National Cathedral. I was asked to speak briefly, and here is a pic the press pool snapped:

After speaking to a packed house, i had the cathedral cleared, turned, admonished the good Lord in Latin, ground my cigarette out on the marble floor, and muttered, “You get Hoynes.”

Ha. Well. We had a blast. Perfect weather, perfect hosts, and I’ll be damned if the trains didn’t run on time. Somehow, even the drive back, in which Supermousey upchucked in three different states, and at least two different timezones, was really pleasant, no traffic, few trucks. We are glad to be home though.

Or, yakked, if you prefer. No, I won’t do that, because I have many other choices… If I want, I can entertain and indeed thrill my readers with tales from afar…seeing as we just returned from our trip to the Nation’s Capitol. I could mention I literally ran into Norm Coleman around the corner from the White House. Or, I could mention the 1400 mile journey through the Appalachians on our big loop of a drive. I could point to a moment this weekend where my son and I stood on the last vessel to sink an enemy ship at Pearl harbor. I could even talk about beautiful suburban Maryland and that we stayed within walking distance of where the Blair Witch Project was filmed. (The cemetery is quite small.)

But I won’t do any of those things. Because, I found this, and I love it more than life itself: